The Politics of Cloning
BARNES, FRED
The Politics of Cloning It's the only domestic issue Bush is focusing on. BY FRED BARNES ENACTMENT OF A FULL BAN on human cloning is complicated by two dozen or more senators, roughly half of...
...Senate Republicans have given up on Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and they worry about losing Orrin Hatch of Utah...
...Brown-back-Landrieu would bar this...
...A group of 40 Nobel Prize scientists insisted a full ban would chill all scientific research...
...No, what they're talking about is preventing human cloning...
...Of course any gains from research on cloned embryos are purely speculative at this point...
...Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics, that no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another...
...Anti-cloning forces are also targeting Democratic senators facing reelection this fall, particularly Jean Carnahan of Missouri and Tim Johnson of South Dakota...
...The lead Republican is Sen...
...Another argument is to insist that embryos created by cloning are not really human...
...They'd written him off as hopeless, but the letter suggested he might vote for a moratorium on all cloning, with a timetable for revisiting the issue later...
...His moral case was neatly complemented by a Senate floor speech and Washington Post op-ed by Sen...
...Kass has talked to a number of senators one-on-one...
...Advocates of the ban wanted to bring Leon Kass, head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, before a meeting of Republican senators...
...Mengele territory...
...Meanwhile, the biotech industry will hit Capitol Hill next week with 200 CEOs...
...The first, he favors...
...Other senators favor the ban but are deathly afraid of drawing attention to this by cosponsoring legislation...
...Cloned embryos used in research would be killed...
...He feels very deeply about this," an aide said...
...Hardly...
...The attention to cloning contrasts with Bush's relative lack of interest since September 11 in domestic policy...
...BY FRED BARNES ENACTMENT OF A FULL BAN on human cloning is complicated by two dozen or more senators, roughly half of them Republicans, who wish the issue would go away...
...The head of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research claimed the anti-cloning side is "talking about jailing doctors...
...senators to want to hide...
...She deserved the thanks—an actress from liberal Hollywood standing tall on an issue that prompts some U.S...
...To achieve its aim, the White House will have to stay heavily involved...
...But Bingaman's office said he won't vote for the Brownback-Landrieu measure that Bush backs...
...Bush, who mostly watches sports on television, gave no indication he recognized her...
...One of the feminists was Patricia Heaton, the Emmy-winning star of the popular TV sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond...
...But proponents of permitting some human cloning have a large problem: public opinion...
...The president is not among the faint-hearted...
...Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania declared last year that he would never condone human cloning, but this year he's cosponsoring legislation that would do just that—ban cloning to reproduce a human, but allow it for scientific and medical research, so-called therapeutic cloning...
...Republican senator Rick SanFred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Six or seven other GOP senators are undecided...
...Before the East Room event, the president met for ten minutes in the Blue Room with three disabled people he would mention in his speech, all of whom want a full ban...
...By 77 percent to 17 percent, adults in a national survey by the Pew Research Center said they oppose scientific experimentation on the cloning of human beings...
...In truth, the embryos would be alive and have a complete genetic code like every human being...
...Bill Frist of Tennessee, a former heart surgeon...
...Two Democrats, John Breaux of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are expected to join Lan-drieu, but they haven't publicly disclosed their position...
...Last year, the ban sailed through the House, 265-162, without serious lobbying by Bush or White House aides...
...A few others are fearful of being linked with the Christian Right...
...Sixty-three Democrats backed the ban in the House, but only one Democratic senator, Mary Lan-drieu of Louisiana, is cosponsoring the Senate version...
...Two religious leaders, an entrepreneur, and two members of Feminists for Life joined the session...
...Doing the second, he said, is premature...
...But the Senate is another story...
...Opponents of cloning were pleasantly surprised by a letter to a constituent from Democratic senator Jeff Binga-man of New Mexico...
...But he thanked her for being there and for speaking out against cloning at a Capitol Hill press conference earlier...
...Let's see what stem cell research produces before steaming off in a new direction...
...Still other Democrats profess to be neutral...
...Frist, who has considerable influence in Congress on medical issues, made a scientific case for banning all human cloning now...
...He devoted an unusual amount of time to drafting his anti-cloning speech last week...
...At one point, Bush interrupted a national security meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, to put the final touches on the text...
...And this, to Bush's way of thinking, drifts into "brave new world" and Dr...
...Sam Brownback of Kansas...
...He distinguished between stem cell research and human cloning experimentation...
...As a result, cloning proponents have grown hysterical in their arguments...
...A lobbying tactic against a full ban is to bring children with disabilities or diseases along to senators' offices and contend they can be cured through research on cloned embryos...
...One GOP senator quietly complained after hearing a colleague's pitch for the ban that he hates dealing with issues with strong moral content...
...torum of Pennsylvania, who supports a full ban, says that "anytime you get an issue with moral repercussions, people head for the hills...
...But on human cloning, the president is committed to winning a total ban...
...He met with speechwriters four or five times the day before, then summoned aides again the next morning to make changes...
...Indeed, they would have to be killed...
...The queasy senators said don't bother...
...His speech, once planned for a bland auditorium in the Executive Office Building, was instead delivered in the East Room to lend it more importance...
...For a full ban to be approved, six or seven Democratic votes will probably be needed to offset GOP defections...
...Its "promise and success . . . do not depend on experimental research cloning," Frist noted...
...For Bush, the primary objection to human cloning is moral...
...And there are promising alternatives to such research...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 31
